Terminator Salvation (Movie Review)

A DIFFERENT KIND OF TERMINATOR MOVIE

I’m a big fan of the Terminator world and the concept of time travel in general.

In the first 3 Terminator movies, 3 distinct time periods exist;

Present day: either 1984 in the first movie, 1995 in the second movie. This is the present(or very near future), from the viewer’s perspective

Judgment Day: 1997, 2004, 2011, ..some day in the future when Skynet is activated and the machines nuke the humans.

The post-Judgment Day Skynet Future: 2018, 2029, 2032…in this time period, Judgment Day has happened, the earth is a barren wasteland, and all humans are running for their lives 24/7.

WE FINALLY GET TO SEE THE FUTURE

Prior to the release of Terminator Salvation, we have only heard about this post-Judgment Day future that the Terminators come from.

Maybe we’ll see small clips of this future world in the other movies but we have never actually been there to explore it fully.

I like this movie because it takes us to that post-Judgment Day future.

THE FUTURE IS BLEAK

We get to see how John Connor (played by Christian Bale) and the rest are surviving in a world where machines are trying to kill them 24/7.

From previous movies, we know that Connor survives long enough to send people back into the past (like Kyle Reese) but we don’t know the story of how he was able to get there and how hard it was.

REALITY BITES

Terminator Salvation seems way more real than any of the other movies made so far.

There are interesting characters who are mostly just tired and angry. You can tell that they have been running from death machines their whole lives.

We see how smart the robots really are.

THEY ARE TOO MUCH LIKE US

The machines were originally programmed by humans to think like we do and take over certain tasks from us. Then we are surprised when they are able to predict our every move and think of ways to out-wit us.

We learn that the only way to win against the machines is to completely change the way that we think and be unpredictable.